that bitch regret the day she ever crossed Holly and her friends? Subterfuge? Manipulation? None of them struck Holly as right, either.
Holly froze when she heard footsteps on the upstairs landing. Her senses pulled her toward the open double doors. The night called to her to disappear in it, but she didn’t leave. She stayed where she was.
In a moment, the steps came closer, and someone tiptoed down the stairs. Wyatt halted next to her and scowled into the moonlight. “What are you doing down here? Why aren’t you in bed?”
She shrugged. “I was just thinking.”
“Thinking, my ass!” he returned. “You’re about to have a baby. You shouldn’t be standing out here at all hours. Get upstairs.”
She shook her head. “Sorry. I know what I said about coming to your room, but I changed my mind. I shouldn’t even be in this house.”
He cocked his head, and his sharp eyes flashed. “What’s the matter with you? I didn’t think you could be that dense that you let what happened at Crooked Creek bother you.”
“It doesn’t bother me. It just…it changes things.”
“For you, maybe. Not for the rest of us.”
“I’m not the person you thought I was,” she went on. “I’m not the person I thought I was.”
“What does that mean?” he asked. “You’re going to turn your back on all six of us? Is that it? You’re gonna take yourself off somewhere and raise this baby alone? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Of course not. That isn’t what I mean at all.”
“Then, by all means, explain to me what you do mean,” he returned. “Explain what changed between this morning and now that you have decided not to come to my room—or even into this house, for that matter.”
She returned to gazing through the doors. The moon illuminated a thousand dewdrops on the grass. It cast the forest in silver. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me. I’m a bear shifter, too, you know. Are you saying I wouldn’t understand how it feels to be a bear, to run around out there, and to experience a bear’s appetites? Do you honestly think you can convince me of that? I think I know a little more about it than you do.”
She spun around and stared at him. Of course he knew. He had to. They must all know what it was like. They all spent years living in the woods before Pearl died.
Holly lunged away from him. She had to get away from him. She didn’t want to be around someone—anyone—who understood her deepest thoughts and feelings that well. She dashed through the door, but at the last second, he caught her. “Wait right there a second, girl!”
She tore out of his grasp and raced into the undergrowth. She left him and the house and her problems far behind. She had to. She needed to hide from him before he saw and understood too much.
She charged deep into the woods. She spent the last days holding back from shifting whenever possible. She fought daily, hourly, against the urge to shift. She only lost the fight in life-threatening situations like this afternoon.
Now the irresistible urge to escape seized her. It carried her miles in a few minutes. She found her own tracks trending toward The Stones, and she deliberately turned aside. She didn’t want to see The Stones. She didn’t want to remember her time there with Keller—or Garret, for that matter.
She dove into a trackless ravine and emerged hundreds of miles to the west. She stayed well clear of the known places. She didn’t want to see anything familiar.
She topped a mountain she’d never visited before, but when she slowed her pace to look around her, another bear emerged from the thicket. The huge male trotted up next to her. One whiff of his scent told her Wyatt had followed her all this way.
She wheeled and plunged down the mountain into even rougher terrain. She ran faster and harder, doing her best to leave him behind, but he kept pace with her no matter what. Occasionally, he dropped back to let her run ahead, but he never broke off.
She cursed him in her heart. She hated him for proving Elise right. She knew all along he and Garret wouldn’t care that she became a shifter or that she was impervious to bullets. That wasn’t her problem. The problem was…well, herself. She was the problem.
It all came down to that. She didn’t want this to be her self. She didn’t want to be this, no